Federal Child Care Bills Still Legislative Orphans

June 8, 1988|By LINDA GREENHOUSE, New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- The notion that the federal government should help working parents take care of their children has been embraced this year by politicians of every stripe. But the consensus needed to translate those campaign pronouncements into legislation has yet to emerge.

A bill to give parents the right to take unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child faces serious obstacles on Capitol Hill, despite bipartisan compromises that have scaled back the bill`s reach to exempt the great majority of employers as well as more than half the work force.

But the hurdles facing the bill for family and medical leave are slight compared with the legislative roadblocks in more ambitious bills that would enhance the federal role in providing child care services through subsidies, employer tax credits and other strategies.

In an election year with Congress already feeling the pressure of the calendar, the odds are against final action on any child care bill this session. Instead, advocates for the issue view this election season as a time to lay the groundwork.

Proponents of dozens of competing child care bills are divided by philosophical differences that transcend or obscure the issue of how to accommodate federal policy to the fact that the demand for affordable, reliable child care far outstrips the supply.

Conflicts have surfaced over a range of issues: the role that church-based programs, which account for nearly a third of all day care slots, should play in any federal subsidy program; whether federal licensing standards would trample on state prerogatives; whether a program that helps families with two wage earners meet their child care needs is inequitable and would discriminate against families in which the mother chooses to stay home and care for the children rather than take a paying job.

``There are real differences of opinion,`` said Rep. Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine who is a chief sponsor of the most ambitious child care proposal.

But Snowe said the best strategy was simply to press ahead. ``I`m worried about deferring the issue, because the differences aren`t going to disappear,`` she said.

While earlier predictions that child care would be the ``sleeper`` item on the 1988 political agenda have not yet been fulfilled, the issue still has demonstrable voter appeal. The majority of mothers of children a year old or younger are in the labor force -- 51.9 percent of them, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

``The `kids` issues are inescapable,`` said Stanley B. Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who began advising clients last year that identification with children`s issues was good politics. ``We have not been able to find a way to word a child care question that doesn`t produce a positive response of over 60 percent.``

Some experts say that what the issue still lacks is political leadership. Barbara Whitehead, a social historian at the Gordon Center for Public Policy, at Brandeis University, argues that middle-class voters will respond eagerly to a politician who conveys an understanding not just of the mechanics of child care but of what she called the ``rhythms of day-to-day life.``

Neither Vice President Bush, the probable Republican nominee for president, nor Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, the probable Democratic nominee, have had much to say about child care.

There is no official Reagan administration position on child care, and members of the administration have sent out differing signals on the issue. The White House is opposed to the family and medical leave bill, which is awaiting action on the House floor and is scheduled for consideration this summer by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

The current version of the bill in the House shows the effect of a long bipartisan search for a compromise. The bill, as approved late last year by the House Education and Labor Committee, provides for a 10-week parental leave, a 15-week medical leave, and applies only to companies with 50 or more employees -- a level that exempts about 95 percent of the nation`s employers, according to the General Accounting Office, a congressional investigative arm.

Even in its amended form, the bill remains a target of the business community, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which argues that Congress should not mandate an employee benefit that should be left to collective bargaining or employer discretion.

Republicans have been more visible in the debate over child care than in the effort to develop a family leave policy. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rep. Nancy L. Johnson of Connecticut, both Republicans, this year introduced the child care services improvement bill. The measure would establish a $250- million-a-year program of federal grants to the states to develop child care programs, which would operate with vouchers or a sliding fee schedule to enable poor families to participate.

The Hatch-Johnson bill is dismissed as inadequate by sponsors of another major bill, a $2.5-billion measure that would channel substantially more funds to the states to subsidize services for low- and middle-income families. It would require state programs to meet national standards governing staff qualifications, child-teacher ratios and health and safety requirements.